Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis — reportedly already “reduced to little more than shattered concrete and rubble” — has been the target of a new Israeli military operation over the past fortnight.
The city is also home to Nasser Hospital, one of Gaza’s few semi-functioning health facilities and the temporary workplace of Australian psychologist Malcolm Hugo, who is managing a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) mental health and psychosocial team at the facility.
In the past two weeks, “we’ve had to respond to mass casualty influxes of injured patients on a couple of occasions … A lot of people turn up at the emergency department and you can imagine some of the injuries,” Hugo told Crikey on July 29.
At one point, more than 50 corpses were brought to the hospital’s morgue, he said.
“We work the best we can with supporting the families, but it’s been chaotic and pretty messy.”
Hugo said many people in Gaza had now had “quite traumatic” surgical interventions.
“Using a psychological term, most of these people would have an ‘acute stress disorder’, so our role is intervening as best we can in terms of stress reduction and also looking at pain management strategies,” Hugo, who is one of MSF Australia’s longest-serving field workers, said.
Hugo went to Aceh, Indonesia, in the wake of the devastating 2004 tsunami and 10 years later joined MSF teams combatting the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. He also contributed to mental health services in the West Bank in 2008 and was based in Jerusalem from 2011 to 2012.
‘The last hospital’ in Gaza’s south
When Hugo arrived at Nasser in June, the hospital had 50 beds, less than 5% of what you’d find at a hospital like the Royal Melbourne. Now Nasser has 72 beds — but it’s currently providing care for more than 500 patients, an MSF spokesperson said on July 29.
In May, the World Health Organization said about one-third of Gaza’s 36 hospitals and healthcare centres were functioning, and often at a significantly reduced capacity.
Nasser “is really the last hospital in south of Gaza”, Hugo said. If it has to be evacuated, “there’s really nowhere for the severely ill patients to go to. We can do our best, but there’s really nowhere to go”.
“There’s a lot of pressure on staff and patients … because we’re not quite sure what is going to happen over the next few days,” he told Crikey.
On July 30, Reuters reported that thousands of Palestinians were returning to Khan Younis as Israeli forces ended their incursion into the east of the city. Several days earlier the United Nations said around 180,000 people in Khan Younis had been displaced by Israel’s operation.
Earlier in the year, Nasser was shelled by Israeli forces, MSF says. Following weeks of intense ground fighting and airstrikes in the area, it was left completely out of service for a period.
At one point, Israeli soldiers raided the hospital complex, forcing staff members to wait outside stripped to their underwear, according to a CNN report.
Israel said it had arrested hundreds of militants at the hospital including some who were posing as doctors. Following the raid, Palestinian authorities reported the discovery of more than 300 bodies in a mass grave.
Israel and several of its Western allies have long argued that Hamas uses Gaza’s healthcare facilities — as well as the enclave’s schools and mosques — to shield its fighters and military equipment.
MSF Australia’s head of programs Simon Eccleshall said the organisation was “aware of Israel’s allegations” but did not have any “direct information as to such a presence”.
“We were deeply alarmed by these allegations,” Eccleshall told Crikey.
“We have publicly stated that military operations in or around hospitals pose a direct threat to the hundreds of patients, medical staff and the thousands of civilians sheltering in hospitals.”
More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The ministry’s figures, which don’t distinguish between fighters and civilians, have been supported by some experts.
In May, Israel claimed that around 50% of Gaza’s casualties were civilians. Estimates from independent experts late last year put that number closer to 70%.
